August 1998: The iMac is Apple’s most important product roll-out since the original Macintosh. A column by Jim Davis on Cnet (The iMac’s Ancestors) reminded me how like and unlike the two computers are. Here’s a comparison of features.
| Model | Macintosh | iMac |
| CPU | 8 MHz 68000 | 233 MHz G3 |
| Speedometer 3 | 0.9 | 175 (est.) |
| RAM | 128 KB, fixed | 32,000 KB, expandable |
| screen | 9″ 1-bit b&w | 15″ 24-bit color |
| resolution | 512 x 384 | 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768 |
| storage | 400 KB floppy | 4,000,000 KB hard drive 650,000 KB CD-ROM |
| networking | 230.4 Kbps LocalTalk | 100,000 Kbps ethernet |
| serial ports | 2, limited to 19.2 kbps | 2 USB, 12,000 kbps |
| size | 13.6″ x 9.6″ x 10.9″ | 15.8″ x 15.2″ x 17.6″ |
| weight | 16.5 lb. | 38.1 lb. |
| slots | none | none (unsupported) |
| SCSI ports | none | none |
| bus speed | 8 MHz | 66 MHz |
| price | $2,495 | $1,299 |
The iMac is about 200 times faster,* starts out with 256 times as much memory, has 10,000 times the storage space, networks at up to 400 times LocalTalk speed, and costs just over half what the original Macintosh did.
Pretty good for 14 years of computer evolution.
* A Power Mac G3/233 benchmarks at 175 times the speed of a Mac Classic, which is about 15% faster than the original Mac.
keywords: #imac #mac128k
